Category Archives: Namecoin

“What’s in a Name …coin?

Namecoin is a peer to peer Ecoin based on Bitcoin. Unlike some other Bitcoin derived Ecoins, Namecoin has its own unique block chain. Namecoin’s unique blockchain features are what makes Namecoin a unique Ecoin. The coin gets its name from the fact that the holder of a Namecoin get to custom write fields in the Namecoin public blockchain.

Every Namecoin is yours to write.

The unique Namecoin feature, having a unique name for each transaction, greatly increased the anonymity and security of Namecoins. The Namecoin blockchain is a a public spreadsheet that stores data on every Namecoin transaction in the blockchain. There are a few extra columns for data in the Namecoin blockchain. When you receive a Namecoin you get to put custom information or data in the row that is dedicated in the blockchain to your Namecoin transaction. While this ledger is publically readable, only the Namecoin owner can write to this row in the table.

When you acquire a Name coin you get to fill a row in the table with whatever information you want. Some of the most common insertions are encrypted data, a domain name pointing to an ip addresses, a name or an openid addresses. You can put anything you want in there as long as it fits the field parameters. Any application that wants the information just has to read the spreadsheet. However, only the owner of that row can adjust the values of their row. To write to the row, the name coin holder provides their encrypted Namecoin wallet to prove ownership.

Namecoin transactions include two small fees, a network fee and a transaction fee. The network fee is used to ‘pay’ for the unique name for the transaction. The Namecoin network fee is set to drop as more Namecoins enter circulation. Right now it costs 0.02 for new .bit domain and lasts for 175 days. Then you have to update for 0.005. The transaction fee is variable depending on how fast you need the transaction to execute. The transaction fee ranges from 0 to .01 NMC.